t, his blood seemed to have become fairly chilled.

At first he thought he would head straight home, as he was only a couple
of miles or so away from Riverport. Then suddenly he found his thoughts
going out in the direction of Arnold Masterson and his daughter, Sarah.
He had not been to see them for several days now, since the man was
able to leave his bed and hobble about the house, in fact.

A sudden notion to drop in on them, and explain about Buck's coming,
seized upon Fred, though he never was able to tell why he should give
way to such a strange resolution. But changing his course he headed
toward the Masterson farm.

CHAPTER XIX

GLORIOUS NEWS

The more Fred thought of it the stronger became his conviction that Buck
and Billy would be a long time in finding the lonely Masterson
farmhouse, that was off the main road.

They had left him going in a direction that was really at right angles
to the shortest way there. But then possibly Buck knew of another route.
And after all it was none of his business.

Evening had now settled down in earnest. There would be a moon later;
but darkness was beginning to shut out the last expiring gleams of
daylight.

Fred was feeling pretty "chipper" as he himself expressed it. So far as
he could ascertain no serious result had accompanied his fall into that
hole, and the exposure that followed the mishap.

His muscles having come back to their old condition, he was running as
easily as ever before; and he believed himself to be in splendid
condition.

This sudden determination to drop in on Arnold Masterson and his
daughter was going to take him a considerable distance out of his way;
but what are a few miles to an aspiring young athlete, in training for a
hard road race on the morrow? It would really do him good to have the
exercise, he believed.

Fred had managed to have a good talk with the Mastersons the last time
he was over. He had taken both father and daughter into his confidence,
and told them how Squire Lemington, in connection with the powerful
syndicate, was trying to swindle his folks out of the rich Alaska claim,
which they truly believed belonged to them, and not to the capitalists.

Of course Fred had met with ready sympathy from the occupants of the
Arnold Masterson house. They themselves had suffered too recently from
the grasping methods of the old Squire not to sympathize with new
victims.

And Fred had a double object in telling the stor